How are we justified from sin?

Leave a reply

For one who has died has been justified from sin (Romans 6.7).

To be “justified” in Paul’s letter to the Romans is to be subjected to courtroom or courtroom-like procedure. This is especially clear in Romans 3 and I won’t reproduce the evidence here. But how is one justified not just from the guilt of sin, but sin itself? Here in Romans 6, the context demands that Paul is addressing why we should no longer “continue..” or “remain in sin.”

One must remember that sin is not only a cause of God’s judgment or wrath, from which we need protection, but it is also a form of God’s wrath on sin. One sins and is punished by being “given up” to more sin. Romans 1.18ff establish this fact. Here is a sample:

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions.

Since sin is a judicial punishment, release from sin requires a new judgment. The judge needs to say, “The accused is hereby ruled free from sin,” and bang the gavel down. (In this case, the banging of the gavel is the resurrection of Jesus.) So Jesus’ death and resurrection release us not just from the guilt of sin but also from the power of sin.

Thus Titus 2.11-14:

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

We are redeemed (liberated) not just from guilt but from lawlessness. Once we were slaves to lawlessness and now we are God’s special treasure “zealous for good works.” The grace of God “trains us.”

Likewise 1 Peter 1.17-19:

And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

Sin, in this image, is a network of ancestral ways from which you need to be ransomed, just like the Israelites were released from Egypt at Passover. Jesus died to bring you out of sin and into righteousness, not merely as guilt and and legal standing, but also as a way of sin and a way of righteousness.

This movement applies to world history. As Romans 1.18ff portrays vividly, under God’s wrath the whole world, Jew and Gentile alike, was plunging downward into a dark spiral of apostasy and idolatry. Finally, Jesus stopped it:

But now the God’s righteousness has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—God’s righteousness  through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the liberation [or redemption] that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, through faithfulness. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

 

How the man of God did not prophesy to Eli

Leave a reply

And there came a man of God to Eli and said to him, “Thus the Lord has said, ‘Did I indeed reveal myself to the house of your father when they were in Egypt subject to the house of Pharaoh? Did I choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to go up to my altar, to burn incense, to wear an ephod before me? I gave to the house of your father all my offerings by fire from the people of Israel. Why then do you scorn my sacrifices and my offerings that I commanded, and honor your sons above me by fattening yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering of my people Israel?’ Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel, declares: ‘I promised that your house and the house of your father should go in and out before me forever,’ but now the Lord declares: ‘Well, so it goes, for those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me I shall also honor because my election is unconditional and once chosen, always chosen.’”

via Passage: 1 Samuel 2.27-35 (ESV Bible Online).

Paul wants us to get back in line to be ready for the surge

Leave a reply

It is a lot easier to read the Apostle Paul tell you from his jail cell to submit to tyrants than it is to hear a politico quote the Apostle Paul to use pious lingo that effectively means “Get back in line!”

(As the grasshopper said to the ant, which has always made me wonder if Pixar had someone who brought up the fable at a planning meeting… but I digress).

But whether it comes from the Apostle or the authoritarian, it is still true. Just because a tyrant, in his unbelief, is pushing a deadly weapon into your hands, doesn’t mean you should share his lack of faith and refuse to grab the handle.

Faith and patience win out in the end.

It is not just the public sector. All your life you will hear authority figures endorse ethics and values that make you more compliant to the ones enjoying authority over you–ethics and values you don’t see them practicing when it is to their hurt. But do as they say not as they do. God is slow to anger but not asleep. And when it is time for the changing of the guard, he will see you are ready for authority precisely because you served well.

If you have to spend time in a jail cell, you don’t want to waste the preparation that it can provide you!

Corporate election is not in conflict with electing individuals to eternal life

Leave a reply

And you shall make response before the Lord your God, “A wandering Aramean was my father. And he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number, and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous. And the Egyptians treated us harshly and humiliated us and laid on us hard labor. Then we cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great deeds of terror, with signs and wonders. And he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. And behold, now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground, which you, O Lord, have given me.” And you shall set it down before the Lord your God and worship before the Lord your God.

Here we have an objective, past, corporate fact—the election and calling of Abraham, the Exodus from Egypt, and the conquest of Canaan.

But notice how it is all personal. God rescued me from Egypt and brought me into the Promised Land. This would be true of an Israelite even though it was generations later. It would even be true if his family had come in as Gentile immigrants and proselytes. As circumcised citizens they would have been required to make this same confession.

Corporate realities always have personal application. I tell my children that General George Washington led the continental army and won “our” freedom from the British—and that is true even though I have no idea if my ancestors came to colonial America or if they immigrated after the new nation was born. I can celebrate the Fourth of July regardless–just as an Israelite could celebrate the Passover regardless of whether his forefathers had been in Egypt or if he came from a line of proselytes who were adopted into a tribe much later. Each Israelite must confess God’s grace: the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great deeds of terror, with signs and wonders. And he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

“‘By a strong hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, from the house of slavery. For when Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of animals. Therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all the males that first open the womb, but all the firstborn of my sons I redeem.’ It shall be as a mark on your hand or frontlets between your eyes, for by a strong hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt” (Ex 13.14-16).

“When your son asks you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the Lord our God has commanded you?’ then you shall say to your son, ‘We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. And the Lord showed signs and wonders, great and grievous, against Egypt and against Pharaoh and all his household, before our eyes. And he brought us out from there, that he might bring us in and give us the land that he swore to give to our fathers. And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as we are this day. And it will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to do all this commandment before the Lord our God, as he has commanded us.’” (Deut 6.20-25).

Read Esther, which ends with all those Gentiles all over the known world becoming Jews. They all had to follow these laws and say these things. It happened to other people but they were included in it. Thus they had the obligation to trust in God and him only. The First Commandment applied to them complete with the Prologue: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.”

But other aspects of the Exodus also had direct implications for the Israelites. For example, Moses told Pharaoh to send his people away so that they could hold a feast to him. And thus, when God delivered Israel, he set up several feasts for the regular worship of God. Likewise, in delivering them from being foreign slaves in Egypt, we find God telling the Israelites to enjoy their Sabbath rest and to treat foreigners and slaves with justice and charity.

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, and repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face. You shall therefore be careful to do the commandment and the statutes and the rules that I command you today (Deut 7.6-11).

Do not say in your heart, after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you. Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Know, therefore, that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people (Deut 9.4-6).

So gracious election is fundamental to the OT story. And furthermore, it is an individual election. It is common to claim that the OT emphasizes corporate election and the NT emphasizes (or worse: alone teaches) individual election. But even without further exegesis or passages, we only need to think about it thirty seconds to know that is nonsense in the case of the OT. What was the attitude that Israelites were supposed to cultivate? Were they supposed to go around saying, “Wow, I sure am lucky to have been born an Israelite!”

Of course not! They were supposed to be grateful to God. He hadn’t just chosen a nation in the abstract. No, each Israelite, when he heard the story of Israel’s national deliverance, if he believed it, then he believed that God had loved and planned to reach him with his covenantal grace. Unlike the founding of America, which was done by finite creatures who only had a vague positive regard for future generations, Israel was formed by the sovereign and omniscient God. When Moses promised the people, “It is not with you alone that I am making this sworn covenant, but with whoever is standing here with us today before the Lord our God, and with whoever is not here with us today” (Deut 29.14, 15), God knew exactly who those future people would be because they were part of his plan as he superintended history. If the Israelites were supposed to be grateful, rather than feel lucky, then it could only be because that they knew In the land or in Abraham we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will (c.f. Eph 1.11). They could sing: Blessed be God the Lord, who has blessed us in Abraham with every blessing in the Promised Land, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love (1.3, 4).

So, just as the story of national deliverance from the gods of Egypt, meant each Israelite individually was free to serve God and appointed to glorify him at his sanctuary, so the story of Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension, as the head of the Church, means that each Christian has been the object of God’s special, sovereign love. Just as the Israelite was to confess “and the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm,” so Paul told Peter as recorded in Galatianins 2.20: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

God’s love is not impersonal. He doesn’t love an abstract entity (“Israel” or “the Church”) and leave it up to individuals to clamber into it on their own efforts. No, he provides not only grace for the Church but he works by providence and by His Spirit to draw specific people into the Church.

The doctrine of personal, eternal, unconditional election is absolutely necessary to avoid reducing the Gospel to some sort of rescue vehicle which some are lucky enough to find and while others are accidentally left out. No, the entire story of salvation happened because God loved those who he brought and brings to believe the story.

Exhibit A. that Reformed Theology is being replaced by a charicature which is being declared the only orthodoxy

7 Replies

This is a long quotation from someone else; not me!

Anyone who is a Christian has probably heard of John Piper, Pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minnesota.  No one could possibly challenge his zeal for the Word of God.  I have most certainly been edified by what he has preached, however, I do believe there are ideas of concern in his book, “Future Grace”.  His analysis of faith versus anxiety was very helpful as he showed that they are opposed to each other.  His writing on patience was equally edifying, “the strength of our patience hangs on our capacity to believe that God is up to something good for us in all our delays and detours”(174).  In our battle with sin, Piper shows he understands the limitations of mere commands, “If we try to fight the fire of lust with prohibitions and threats alone—even the terrible warnings of Jesus—we will fail” (336).  But, Piper’s framework seems to distract from the message of the true Gospel.  His idea of Grace is too broad and maybe ambiguous.  He says that Adam and Eve lived under God’s Grace in the Garden of Eden.  In the Garden, Adam and Eve had a duty to perform with subsequent reward/punishment for obeying or disobeying.  God’s Grace should be understood in light of sin, and not God’s goodness with them before they sinned.

In the book, Piper doesn’t like the idea of a covenant of works.  He says, “This is important because it is customary for some theologians to give the erroneous impression that God wanted Adam and Eve to relate to him in terms of meritorious works rather than childlike faith” (76).  God not only dealt with them as judge over right and wrong, but there was a “legal” and “family” relationship.  Stressing the family relationship at the expense of the legal relationship they had with God distorts the meaning of Scripture.  As we know, God dealt severely with them when they broke the commandment.  Piper wrote: “I am hesitant to call Jesus’ obedience in life and death the fulfillment of a “covenant of works.” . . . works implies a relationship with God that is more like an employer receiving earned wages that like a Son trusting a Father’s generosity” (413: footnote 4).  Scripture does however teach a legal relationship between God and man.  This includes the same relationship between Father and Son.  The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).  When Jesus fulfilled all that the Father gave of Him, He earned salvation for His people.  Romans 5:18: Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.  In his high priestly prayer, Jesus began by saying: I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do (John 17:4).

A logical conclusion of Piper’s ideas in his book are that Christians must keep the covenant with God.  He wrote: “Keeping the covenant of God did not mean living perfectly.  It meant a life of habitual devotion and trust to the Lord, that turned from evil and followed him in his ways” (248).  Again, “All the covenants of God are conditional covenants of grace—both the old covenant and the new covenant.  They offer allsufficient future grace for those who keep the covenant” (248).  Finally he says, “But what it does mean is that almost all future blessings of the Christian life are conditional on our covenant-keeping” (248).

We must ask ourselves whether or not we actually keep the covenant.  Must we be perfect or not.  The wages of sin is death.  In one act, all fell in Adam.  Piper shows the connection of obedience and blessing but is unclear in his view on just how much obedience we need.  God, however, tells us that without perfection and full obedience we miss it all.  Galatians 3:11-14 tells us that the “One” who did keep the covenant bore the curse.  Piper actually ends up lowering the God’s standard misses the teaching of Christ’s “meritorious” work in His life and death.

Piper says, “The essence of saving and sanctifying faith is our being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus” (236).  Instead of faith looking outside of oneself, he points it back to our “own” satisfaction.  He makes faith our subjective satisfaction in God, instead of confidence in Jesus.  He is attaching conditions to faith.  However, the character of faith should outward looking.

At least, in “Future Grace”, Piper misunderstands Law and Gospel.  He quotes Psalm 103 which has some of the most beautiful verses about God’s forgiveness of sins, but then attributes this to the law (146).  While it is true that God showed Israel some grace, he mainly dealt with them in a covenant or relationship of works.  With the giving of the law at Mt. Sinai and the preface to the 10 commands begins with God’s redemptive work, I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery (Exodus 20:2).  But, if they failed they would be abandoned and exiled.  The law brings only death, the Gospel gives life.  The law only convicts and condemns sinners, and only the Gospel gives life.

Piper ends up attaching conditions to God’s promises.  It is true that there is a relationship between works and rewards.  But, the promises come to us by faith in Jesus and not by works!  Yet, there are also promises with conditions in the Covenant of Grace.  But, he pushes these too far in his zeal for obedience.  He has misses the mark by glossing over the most important aspect of salvation, that Jesus has kept the law for us.  He does not integrate this into the Christian life.

Piper fails to mention Romans 7.  I don’t know if he just didn’t think is relevant to the Christian life or not.  But, Paul gives a Christian much reason to have hope.  The Christian life is a continuous battle with sin.  Without the mention of the verses of Paul, one might be deceived into thinking he can uphold the law on his own and we know that is not the case.  This chapter of Paul puts the Christian life in a proper context and reality.

Piper doesn’t seem to like the idea of gratitude as the motivation for obedience.  He claims that thankfulness is never the motivating factor in Scripture for obedience, but this just isn’t the case.  I understand he wants to avoid the debtors mentality, but with such a replacement of gratitude with our “own” obedience could lead to more despair and disillusionment.

Lastly, Piper ends up arguing for two stages of salvation.  Initial justification and final salvation.  He begins to sound like NPP or Federal Vision in his book.  This is surely dangerous water to be treading on.

Finally, I do like a lot of what Piper writes, however I could not recommend “Future Grace”.  His writing has distorted and misunderstood the covenants.  I understand this book was written in ’95 and his views may have changed?  However, he presently doesn’t see anything wrong with Douglas Wilson’s understanding of justification.  A proper understanding of the imputation of the active obedience of Christ to the believer may clear things up.

Source

There was nothing ever wrong with Piper’s view of imputation. This whole ungodly mess is the fault of incompetent teachers who have turned the robust heritage of the Reformation into a sub-chapter of the Grace Evangelical Theological Society. It is neo-dispensationalism that is being trotted out as the heritage of the Reformation–a donkey in a lion’s skin that can only make the Rome and Byzantium look and sound Kingly in comparison.

This bait and switch is going to have massive consequences for Evangelicals in the next generation.

RePost: The best way to defend soteriological Calvinism?

1 Reply

I had objections to the doctrine of predestination but, eventually, these were overcome. What happened is R. C. Sproul’s original (black hair, turtleneck, plaid pants) lectures on “The Holiness of God”powerfully reintroduced me to my own depravity and guilt. The new understanding of my depravity broke down my objections to facing the passages that talk of our need for God’s invincible grace. The new understanding of my guilt broke down my objections to facing the passages that spoke of God’s sovereign rights to have mercy on whom he chooses.

From that point on, I was sure that all objections to decreetal calvinism stemmed from an underestimation of our depravity and our guilt in comparison to God’s holiness.

But what if there are Arminians who are not concerned about such issues?

What if they simply want the cross of Jesus Christ and the offer of salvation in the Gospel to be as deeply revelatory of God’s nature as anything else in Scripture?

It was Athanasius, I think, who said we learned something more essential about God when we named him “Father” from the revelation of His Son, Jesus, than when we named him “Uncreate” from the revelation we find in creation. The point was that creation was God’s volition but that begetting the Son, and being begotten of the Father were eternal relations. God could have chosen not to create and would have been no less God, but he could never fail to beget the Son. Knowing the Son is the Son and the Father is the Father is a grasp of God’s essence much more than knowledge of God as Creator.

And here is the problem. Salvation is supposed to be a revelation of God. It can’t be given equal weight with the trinitarian relationships, of course; if God could choose whether or not to create then the cross could also be chosen or not. But, within creation and the revelation therein both special and general, when we compare the wrath of God to the love of God, wrath looks like it is more fundamental and more revelatory of God’s character.

Think about it. What do we know about God’s character? What must be true about God beyond any possible contingency? The answer is: God must inflict penal suffering on sin. What is fundamental about God is that he punishes. That he is loving and merciful is true, but it could just as easily not be in regard to sinful human beings.

From one angle, this all makes perfect sense. Mercy can’t be obligated, of course. But when it comes to understanding God’s fundamental nature, what it can sound like is that it would make no difference to who God is if he were to damn all creation. He would still be a holy and righteous God. (Come to think of it, inasmuch as Sproul’s lectures were intended to make the listener open to TULIP, the entire project was theological: to relativize love and make it subordinate to holiness. God can decide to be forgiving but fundamentally he must establish separation, control, perfectionism, and punishment.)

Every time a Calvinist tries to get an Arminian to see things differently, he might well be saying something that sounds quite different to the Arminian than what he intends. I have assured and do assure people every time the issue comes up that we should not be amazed that sinners are reprobate but instead should be amazed and thankful that any sinners will ever be saved. Soteriologically and legally this is fine. Theologically it sounds like we have no real revelation of God’s character in his salvation of sinners. The fundamental reality is wrath and the contingency is sometimes that wrath gets put on Jesus instead of the sinner. And this rhetorical gap only widens as we talk about who amazing it is that God saves, how suprising and how strange. Are the doctrines of grace a revelation of or an exception to God’s essence?

I have known of professing Christians who struggle with assurance for no apparant reason. I’m beginning to wonder if this is not a sort of existential or metaphysical angst. Yes there is grace and salvation but the bedrock character of God is punitive justice. Wrath is the fundamental metaphysic. And I think we see other problems cropping up in the Christian life, though if someone wishes to simply deny this, I have no argument to make. Recall Jack Miller’s query as to whether believers who affirm that God loves them are willing to concede that God likes them? Is our presentation of God’s love for sinners something like Darcy’s first proposal to Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice? Does God confess that he loves us in spite of his better judgment and even against his character? Do we give that impression? Would it be good news if we did? Yet it is hard to know how we can affirm slavation as a gratuitous gift without risking sounding like this. Obviously God wasn’t obligated to forgive anyone. Nevertheless, there is tension present in affirming this. It sounds like we don’t know God and this may be the reason why the particularism of Calvinism is resisted.

Is it possible much promotion of calvinism is designed to distract listeners/readers from this problem? Of course, the distraction involves truths about God’s holiness, our sin, and God ability to save. No one is trying to be distracting. But when we find people resisting, maybe it is not because they want to believe they are less depraved than they really are or that God is less capable of salvation. Maybe they want to believe that God is love–that the giving up of his Son is just as revelatory of God’s character as anything else.

So what to do?

First off, I think we should beat Arminians to the punch in bringing up this objection. Let’s admit to it and face it.

Secondly, let’s say that, as powerful as such considerations are, exegesis still trumps our feelings. Of course, by that I don’t mean that our feelings are wrong. On the contrary, it is obvious from reading the Bible that God wants us to have those feelings. Rather, the point is that those feelings must somehow be compatible to what the Bible teaches about predestination and salvation. Even if everything doesn’t fit together as neatly in our minds, it still remains true that the Bible teaches God’s ultimate plan for all things, total depravity, unconditional election (nothing foreseen is the basis for it), limited atonement (God’s motive for sending Jesus was personal), invincible grace, and the preseverence of the eternally elect.

Thirdly, lets emphasize The Free Offer of the Gospel and Common Grace. Here John MacArthur’s excellent comments are a helpful corrective to a lot of hypercalvinism is a great help. But there is a lot of great stuff out there including John Piper, Robert Dabney, and, of course, John Calvin. A couple of things are important here:

  1. Creational Grace The difference between monotheism and everything else–atheism, pantheism, deism, or polytheism–is that the latter means that one can and should have ultimate grattitude and ultimate trust. Reality is not the product of chance, whether impersonal forces or competing personal agents, but a gift of grace. The awful truth of sin and reprobation is found in the fact that people have refused to given thanks and refused to trust (Romans 1.18ff). The background and presupposition of depravity is God’s initiating love.

    We believe that man was created pure and perfect in the image of God, and that by his own guilt he fell from the grace which he received, and is thus alienated from God, the fountain of justice and of all good, so that his nature is totally corrupt. And being blinded in mind, and depraved in heart, he has lost all integrity, and there is no good in him (Gallican Confession, Article IX).

    Everytime we tell of sin we have a chance to tell people of the goodness and love of God that we have and continually deny and distrust. This doesn’t answer every possible question one might have but it does reinforce the metaphysical reality that God is the giving God (James 1.5)

  2. The offer of mercy and grace is sincerely given to all who here it. Even in affirming that the resistance to God’s kindness will lead to perdition Paul does not hesitate to affirm that God’s kindness is intended to bring us to repentance (Romans 2.4, 5). We need to teach God’s decree but not allow it to be used to portray God as either insincere or stingy.

This won’t solve every issue, but it will help us all remember that an ontology of love is something that wrath must somehow fit into rather than love being an inexplicable raft on a sea of fire.

Fourth, lets remember the danger of relying on the printed word to persuade people of the truths of predestinaton and monergistic salvation. When people hear new doctrines (new to them) they have nothing but their imaginations to guess how these new principles would alter their lives. It is much better to introduce people to new communities where people can see that these truths are embodied in love. Otherwise, many may reject the doctrines of grace thinking that, in order to be in the image of God, they must be selective in their love. And worse, some who do embrace these teachings may miscalculate and become the charicatures we all want to avoid. (Think of John MacArthur’s words in the article linked above: “I am troubled by the tendency of some-often young people newly infatuated with Reformed doctrine-who insist that God cannot possibly love those who never repent and believe. I encounter that view, it seems, with increasing frequency.”)

Fifth and finally, when one sees photographs of people who lived their lives in the American frontier wilderness, one often sees people hardened by the elements. And, in our literature and moveies we often see those who survive scoffing at the “tenderfoots” and “soft” Easterners who pass by on trains. Let us not grow hard because we have mistakenly been thinking of reality as hostile, and if we have grown hard, lets not rationalize this by mocking Christians who seem more concerned about portraying a God who is generous than one who is the ultimate cause of all things. One shouldn’t have to choose between those options but if one does, it is not at all clear that one is superior to the other.

Learning contentment at the cliff’s edge

Leave a reply

Believers often find themselves up against it. The challenge might be medical, familial, financial, educational, or personal. We tend to think in terms of pressure or stress, and when it gets really bad, trouble. The old Puritans thought in terms of affliction, as well as in terms of God’s antidote to affliction, which is contentment. Samuel Rutherford once said that affliction was like a wine cellar. When I am afflicted, he said, I look for God’s choicest wines.

Contentment is not something that is suspended in a timeless place, but is rather what God is teaching us while we wait for our deliverance. And we are supposed to be looking for that deliverance in such a way as gives us rest in the present. There is a faithless way of looking for deliverance that exacerbates the present troubles, and there is a way of looking for future deliverance that brings a present deliverance. We are called to the latter.

There are two things to remember as you are carrying the weight of an affliction. The first is the “space” of the deliverance, and the other is the “time” of the deliverance. Let us consider the second of these first.

It was a proverb among the descendants of Abraham that “on the mount of the Lord it will be provided.” This came from God’s provision of a ram for Abraham at the last minute, to be substituted for Isaac. As He tells the stories of our lives, we need to come to grips with the fact that God loves cliffhangers. The application that we should draw from this is that we should love cliffhangers too — even though we are the ones hanging from the cliff.

With regard to the “space” of the trial, a weighty difficulty has mass, it takes up room. It is something you have to carry. But as you carry it (to be distinguished from collapsing under it), you grow stronger. Afflictions are God’s weight room, and He can seem sometimes like a particularly hard trainer. When you are benching more than you thought you volunteered for, and way more than what you thought was a good idea, you need to trust Him. He knows more about this than we do.

Read the rest: Doug Wilson — “When Gollum Bit His Finger Off”

Growth test for churches

2 Replies

The American Spectator : Thriving Christianity.

If you have ever been a pastor in a really small town, you will know what I am talking about.

You can be in a tiny town and see churches that haven’t really grown in years. They service a few families and that is it.

And then the suburbs grow to encompass the town and everything changes. New stores. New gas stations. New traffic lights. And of course the real challenge: new people.

And so many churches start to grow. New people, new children in Sunday school, new officers, new Bible studies and outreach projects, new building programs eventually.

But sometimes a church remains the same in the midst of all this growth. Same people and same families. Same size.

For awhile.

Because if it doesn’t grow eventually the more productive people who aren’t directly tied to the main family (and there always is one) will decide they want a more open community.

And as the church remains the same and then shrinks, there will be a flurry of sociological and theological rationalizations. We are a loving community but others don’t want commitment. We are theologically astute but they are all Arminian or liberal or don’t recognize that our unused copy of an ancient creedal statement was the pinnacle of human history and doctrinal development.

And amillennialism will also help. God loves a remnant for its own sake, not as a seed for growth.

This happens in small towns (when there is economic growth, anyway) all the time. The church becomes older, grayer, and not any wiser.

But what is true of churches in small towns will also prove true of ingrown denominations on planet Earth. The growth of Christianity means some entire communions will sink into oblivion with no one but some church historian who is later searching for an excuse for a PhD dissertation to document the groups decline for postmillennialism to amillennialism.

Are you an Advocate for your wife, or a Satan?

3 Replies

A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding … – Google Books.

I was reading on page 55 and something Peter wrote hit me.

In Genes 3, Adam faced a choice. No I mean after he had already decided to use his wife as an experiment to see if the fruit would kill her. When confronted by God Adam faced a choice.

Would Adam intercede for his wife or would he blame her?

He blamed her. Not surprising. If he was willing to throw the woman in the path of the serpent, he wasn’t going to suddenly act like a man in God’s presence.

So what does that teach us?

Eve had really done wrong. Adam couldn’t exactly be accused of lying about Eve when he blamed her. On the other hand, he had been there with her and had kept silent to see what would happen. He let her go first and then he ate. He was more to blame than she was.

But even if he wasn’t, would it really have been right for him to point at her before God?

We”re supposed to intercede for our wives. We’re supposed to protect them from accusations as best we can. Yes sin should be dealt with, but in most situations, sin in others is an opportunity for exploitation, not justice and certainly not mercy. Husbands should protect their wives from that.

And also from the accuser in her head. Is a husband’s job to point out a wife’s faults or to build her up?

Did it ever occur to you that when Solomon wrote, “House and wealth are inherited from fathers, but a prudent wife is from the LORD,” that he was trying to get you to be thankful for the wife you have?

The heart of her husband trusts in her,
and he will have no lack of gain.

Adam didn’t trust Eve, and he ended up with a great deal of lack. Regard your wife as faithful, before others and before your own heart. You are called to be her Advocate, not her Satan–her Prosecuter.

Humanly speaking, it is complete coincidence that this is scheduled to publish the same day as this.

The Story of the Bible 05

1 Reply

So Adam and Eve are created to have dominion.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

All very simple and straight forward.

Only later do we learn that it required a passage through deep sleep to get to that point.

Adam and Eve were not created together. Adam was not given Eve immediately even though the above passage makes clear that he was not complete, and that humanity was not even fully yet in the image of God without her with him.

Adam is created and put in a garden where he is found to be “not good” because he is alone just the way God made him.

Then he is given the task of naming the animals (the cattle are already sanctuary creatures but God has to bring beasts and birds from the wild lands). Adam fulfills his task and names the animals. He learns none is right for him.

So then what? He can’t make a wife, obviously. God can make a wife. He could do so instantaneously. He could extract tissue from Adam painlessly and cause Eve appear right next to him.

But he doesn’t.

So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,

“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.”

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

The next time we will read about a deep sleep is when God makes a covenant with Abraham (Genesis 15). That gives us some idea why marriage is a covenant (as the prophet Malachi says) even though the word is not used in this passage.

But here is the point: all of this was required to get us to the place in Genesis 1 where God spoke to the Man and Woman together. Only now are Adam and Eve ready to be given their Dominion Mandate, their Great Commission. Only after a near death experience and a raising to new life is Humanity given all authority over the earth and sent out to disciple the nations (compare Matthew 28.19-20).

PS. Note that it has been awhile since I last contributed to this series.